Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Autumn: Death is Life

My death waits there among the leavesIn magicians' mysterious sleevesRabbits and dogs and the passing timeMy death waits there among the flowersWhere the blackest shadow, blackest shadow cowersLet's pick lilacs for the passing timeMy death waits there in a double bedSails of oblivion at my headSo pull up the sheets against the passing time

~ Jacques Brel

Leaves are falling and blowing across the streets and lawns as cool winds whip through my suburban landscape. Gone are the long evenings of slow twilight. Gone are the slow and relaxed gaits of movement. There is an urgency to get through the more turbulent atmosphere and arrive more purposefully at a destination now. The darkness falls quicker and returns slower. The mud and buds of spring time renewal are far away, both in the past and future. Forgotten and not yet imagined. The reality is currently stressing the cold and the process of going dormant. There will be a long stretch of trying to hold on to the promise of renewal ahead of us.

The chill in the air that appears this time of year is incrementally more chilling with each passing year. We feel the slow transition from summer to autumn as becoming less tangential to our own life's cycle. Yet there is a familiar assurance and reassurance that greets us in the annual dying off. We have been through it so many times before that we can feel comfortable knowing the many intricate variations of what we can expect of winter in these temperate latitudes. Imagine the shock if we had never been through a winter before.

The shorter days can be depressing. The cold wind can be painful to endure. The sense of impending death can be a source of dread. Then comes the revelation of our long experience: There can be no renewal without this dying off. There can be no promise without this finality. There is a reason to this season.

6 comments:

And you have allowed yourself to remember what many of us choose to forget.

Permit me the liberty to alter a few of your words to allow you to see what I see:

"We feel the slow transition from [life] to [death] as becoming less tangential to our own life's cycle. Yet there is a familiar assurance and reassurance that greets us in the annual dying off. We have been through [death] so many times before that we can feel comfortable knowing the many intricate variations of what we can expect of [death] in these temperate latitudes. Imagine the shock if we had never been through a [death] before.

Then comes the revelation of our long experience: There can be no renewal without this dying off. There can be no promise without this finality. There is a reason to this season, [for a great joy, and a wondrous becoming awaits us, now, as well as on the other side, when we, at last, merge the three parts of our being--body, mind, and soul--and become one with All That Is.

You should really write that book. You have a way with words that engages both the soul, and the senses.

BD...thanks for putting down your thoughts into mine, and for the compliments. I could think of no better ending than the wondrous becoming you describe.

However, I will admit that I wrote this partially as metaphor for my dread over the coming elections and the huge step backward that reactionary forces might force us all to take. If I could see any solace, it is knowing that the end of this unsustainable curse of a system may be accelerated by their sheer extremism. I just hope the coming winter isn't so cold as to kill off everything.

These Anon losers have infested the internet. They've gone viral, especially on the well-trafficked blogs. If they have found you, it's almost a badge of honor: They only attack those with a solid lock on life, and sure knowledge of who they are.

Their whole aim is to bring you the misery they're feeling. Most of the time it's to attack your liberal political resolve, or your race, or your racial achievements.

Field's blog is so badly infested that he's resorted to accommodating them rather than eliminating them: Many of the thoughtful commenters have abandoned his blog with a "I don't need this crap" swan song.